Here's a curious little (true) Internet tale from my own family. I am NOT losing any sleep over it as it is NOT my problem - but I think it is mildly interesting, and there is a slight etiquette question involved.

A nephew has had his personal e-mail account with Big Internet Company #1 for years. I use Even Bigger Internet Company #2 for my personal e-mail.

When Nephew sent me e-mail, up until a week ago his address appeared in my in-box as <his real name>hisaddress@Company1.com .

Starting a week ago, e-mails from him now appear in my in-box as coming from <somewhat inappropriate slang words>hisaddress@Company1.com .

I thought at first that he had changed his name inside his own e-mail account. That is certainly his right to do so as a young adult. I know he is job hunting right now. My only concern was that if he uses this account to contact prospective employers they may have a bad impression of him because of those slang words, so I just wanted to ask him if he uses this account when job hunting.

Nephew was quite puzzled when I mentioned the name change to him when I saw him this past weekend. At first he had no idea what I was talking about! He said he has not changed his name inside Big Internet Company #1's service. When he sees his own outgoing mail, his name and address appear to him as they always have.

Nephew went on to say, though, that a little over a week ago he started using a free video service on the Internet which I know is now owned by Big Internet Company #2 (which runs my e-mail). Nephew didn't want to use his own real name on Company #2's video service, so he made up a user name with slang words, but used his regular e-mail address from Company #1.

The only explanation I can think of is that maybe Company #2 is substituting his slang name for his real name on incoming messages from his e-mail address because that's what they now have in Company #2's records as the name associated with his e-mail address.

It turns out that this is not a problem for Nephew as he does NOT use his regular personal e-mail address for job hunting. (He has a special e-mail account only for job hunting.) So prospective employers who have their e-mail service through Big Internet Company #2 will not see his slang name after all.

Well, that's my story. It's not a problem for Nephew, but I do wonder if there are any other young adults out there in a similar situation, sending e-mail from other companies' e-mail services and unknowingly having their names changed on incoming messages by Company #2.

I was very careful to be polite and not critical when I asked Nephew about the name change. I think it was the right thing to have done (to have mentioned the change to him). He was not offended at all.

I am curious, though. Would others have mentioned the change or would you have kept quiet about it if you had noticed it?

If you are talking about Gmail/YouTube, then yes it probably is. Even though he is using his email address from company 1, he now has a Google account under "company 1 email account" as "Slang Name"

He can log in to pretty much all of Google's apps with his email address from company 1. For example, I have an AOL account that is my log in for my main google account. Everything except for gmail, I log in with my aol email account.

Or it might be YOUR contact list that is doing it. Apple did this to me when I migrated my contact list over from windows. Rather than have the correct names, it changed several to Apple Inc <correct email address>. In order to fix it, I had to go into my contacts and fix each person's name

Yes, I would have probably mentioned it to him, hopefully in the same caring manner that you did. I find the constant changes that various Internet companies are making to be irritating. They insist that I provide my personal details and then they post them all over the Internet. I have done the same thing that your nephew has done (created an account using "fake" information... actually, mostly nicknames completely different from my real name) and I would want to know that my emails that I thought were professional looking are not. I am glad that it is not an issue for him. He is being very wise by having a separate email account!

We had a houseguest who stayed with us several months (long story). She liked monkeys - Curious George had been her favorite book as a young child.

But her choice of names for her email address was monkeyface*at*local.isp - (well - not quite - but the exact name does not really matter) NOT the one I would have given out for potential employers to use as a point of contact (and our home phone - until she moved back to her custodial parent's house - I said that it was a LONG story).

Nothing I could tell her ten years ago could convince her that she needed her NAME as her email address*at*local.isp if she wanted to be taken seriously for job searches, because MonkeyFace didn't sound like the name of someone old enough to want or need at least a part time job.

I have set up my son with a HisName address at our isp and he has a free one with his chosen gamer name at a free email host site for his gaming friends to use. He also has one through his college - which I seem to recall the college sets up using your legal name - or a variation of it if there are multiple people with "the same name".

+++edited to add+++

I have also seen emails that seem to come from relatives - but when I look at the real email address instead of the "spoof" - the email is from a free email provider and the part before the @ bears no resemblance to the spoofed name. Not to mention that they are calling me by my first name or the nickname for it instead of my middle name.....among other "goofs" that prove the email is a fake without reading much beyond the first line (which shows in my email settings).

Absolutely thoughtful to mention it. Since it was an unexpected change, i woudl always question it. I don't open email from email addresses I don't recognize. Spammers can spoof email addresses in your contact list, so sometimes only slight varaiations are the giveaway that the email is a fake.